I am my Art Journaling Page

I figured out how to scan this journal so that you can see the whole spread in one go by scanning as much as I could of both of them from either direction. Those files were then merged using the Panoramic setting of Photoshop Elements and as you can see above it worked very well.

This is the left-hand page and features one of my own photographs taken this summer and adhered with washi tape which I have decorated. The texture of both pages comes from painting on gesso fairly thickly and then closing the journal and after a few seconds opening it up again. The gesso makes lovely patterns and textures that way. Let it dry really well though before you start to add acrylic paints. I also used various stamps on the page which I coloured in and further embellished. The Ars Longa Vita Brevis is one of my favourites and I use it a lot. It means: life is short but art lasts a long time, in a loose translations.

This is the page on the right with a picture of me (aged 16) at top left. The rest is self-explanatory and speaks for itself. I have dated these pages on the 15th August but I seem to be unable to resist adding to pages I previously thought I was finished with. I only recently added the dots along the sides, just because I fancied doing that. So maybe my pages are never truely done and the journals are an ongoing work of art.